


Perks of Noticing

by theappleppielifestyle



Category: The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom, Young Avengers
Genre: M/M, Oops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-21
Updated: 2013-01-21
Packaged: 2017-11-26 08:13:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/648448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theappleppielifestyle/pseuds/theappleppielifestyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Billy makes a mental note to tell Teddy later that he heard Captain America say ‘bitching.’</p>
<p> </p>
<p>  <em>(The Avengers train the Young Avengers, Billy and Teddy fanboy over everything, Kate walks in on Steve and Tony having sex and Eli doesn't want to know. Tommy finds this all hilarious.)</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Perks of Noticing

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Polski available: [Korzyści dostrzegania](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1152648) by [Pochodnia (kasssumi)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kasssumi/pseuds/Pochodnia)



More and more often nowadays, Billy finds himself chewing on the inside of his cheek to stop himself from bursting out into incredulous, disbelieving laughter, falling to his knees and screaming “WHAT IS MY _LIFE_.”

In a good way, of course.

Or, sort of a good way, sometimes in a good way and sometimes in a hysterical, bleeding-out, oh-my-god-I’m-being-chased-by-doombots-should-I-fanboy-or-yell-for-help-holy-fucking-crap-I-am-going-to-die-flailing kind of way. Like, when Doctor Ock makes an appearance in the middle of a battle and Billy literally has to pinch himself from asking for an autograph. Like when the Avengers had congratulated them after joining forces and then had asked them if they wanted to train with them, which Billy still freaks out over even though it’s been ages since it happened.

Then again, Teddy had looked like he was doing the exact same thing, and god, Billy has really lucked out by getting a boyfriend as nerdy as he is. He’s even lucked out just getting Teddy as a boyfriend, full-stop. Like, lucked out to the point where he catches himself smiling dopily at thin air because he’s stuck in science class and the Bunsen burners make him think about how Teddy’s hair looks when the sun hits it just right, and _then_ he has to stop himself from calling Teddy at lunch, because for some reason, ‘sometimes I sit here and bask in the glow of how much I freaking love you’ doesn’t strike him as a suitable opening line.

Anyway, the aforementioned incredulous, disbelieving laughter usually comes in at the most inconvenient of times. i.e., the entire month after he had just become a superhero, where he had to stop himself from grinning randomly and whooping and punching the air and informing random strangers that he’s a SUPERHERO, he has POWERS and a TEAM and he’s been wanting this since he was old enough to say the word ‘comic.’ Unfortunately, the whole ‘secret identity’ thing had stopped him. That, and at that point they hadn’t done anything yet except throw each other around an abandoned warehouse and bitch about their costumes and, in Eli’s case, yell at Iron Lad to tell them who the hell he really was.

For a while there is was a serious struggle convincing his parents he wasn’t on drugs after he started coming home and hugging the both of them, followed by Jordan, followed by both his batshit insane younger brothers, all of whom were incredibly confused by Billy’s sudden increase of affection for seemingly no reason.

Which spurred his mom on to determinedly surf the web for six straight hours for facts on drugs and dig up some old recourses, and then come into Billy’s room and declare that she’s just done a fuckload of research and Drugs Are Dangerous Although I Totally Respect Your Boundaries and Your Defining Yourself As An Adolescent and your eyes actually look a little glazed over, why don’t you come over here and I can examine you because I am legally qualified to do this shit.

Not in those words, but you get the gist.

And it’s not like he could come out and say, _I’m really fucking happy lately because I’m a freaking superhero and there’s a guy I like who isn’t an utter asshole and most of the time I can’t even bring myself to care that he’ll never like me in a million years and I’m a superhero and I have powers and I’m a superhero and Teddy’s really nice and sweet and funny and cute and perfect and it sucks and I’m a **superhero** did I mention that_ \- so when his parents find out about Teddy and the fact that he and Billy are dating, as in _going out_ , as in Teddy _likes_ him, they chalk the sudden surge of hugging down to an out of control crush.

Which it really, really was and it still really, really is, and it’s embarrassing and Billy still drifts off in class and on the bus and at the dinner table to thinking about Teddy’s laugh and dimples and hair and the blunt of his teeth and basically every single aspect down to what Teddy’s tongue feels like in his mouth, which has been the start of at least three poking wars between him and Jordan after Billy wouldn’t answer her when she asked him to pass the peas.

And, y’know, Billy struggling to re-arrange his backpack subtly on his crotch as he wills the inappropriate boners away during television time after dessert. Which is a given, because come on, even if he was straight, Teddy’s hands flexing around his biceps would give his sexuality a run for its money. Teddy’s biceps, and his tongue. Which Billy has brought up before, but it deserves a second mention. Odes should be written to Teddy’s tongue. And his fingers. And the length of his fingers. And how his shirt hitches up when he reaches for something. And how he fiddles with the line of his earrings. And _goddamn you, teenage hormones_.

Anyway, it makes sense. Billy starting off about helpless laughter about the stupidity of his superhero life, and it stemming off to Teddy, because apparently the synapses of his brain have decided it’s a good idea to make every. Freaking. Thing. Loop. Back. To. Teddy.

Like, _seriously_. Last week, he was squinting up at the sun and thinking about how he should really stop breaking his damn sunglasses, and how much his dad pays to get the expensive ones instead of the cheap crappy ones which work just as well because the expensive ones block UV rays or some crap, and then he had found himself thinking _hey, the sun kinda reminds me of Teddy_.

Which is true, because Teddy is basically the sun personified- with his hair and his eyes and the way he practically lights up from the inside- but it’s also THE SUN, which is a GIANT BALL OF GAS BILLIONS OF MILES AWAY THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING EVER and Billy thinks he should get at least a temporary break from thinking 24/7 about his boyfriend because he knows at some point he’ll be in the middle of fighting off some minions of whatever villain they’re facing and he’ll get impaled because he’s distracted by Teddy’s flexing freaking biceps and no amount of dodging training with Cap is going to save him.

So now it’s like: Billy picks up a pencil. Which has lead that is the colour of Teddy’s eyes when it rains. Billy pulls the curtains and the fabric is sort of what Teddy’s hoodie feels like, if he scrunches it enough. Billy plays absentmindedly with Jordan’s slinkie and remembers the feel of Teddy’s tiny, hooped earrings nicking his forehead as he passes.

_This shit_ , Billy tells himself as he’s zipping up his bag one morning, _is going to get me impaled and needs to stop_.

He then proceeds to make it a record twelve minutes without thinking of Teddy, before opening the door to find him standing on the doorstep with his hand raised like he’s ready to knock.

Teddy says, “Oh, hey, you’re early,” and Billy gets freaking butterflies when he freaking smiles as he says it and he is so utterly screwed and fuck getting impaled because it’s so worth it.

Billy muffles Teddy’s small noise of surprise with his mouth when Billy yanks him forwards by his hoodie and kisses him, and thank god Teddy has cheeto-breath, because if he smelled minty fresh at this time in the morning Billy might start yelling, “I GIVE UP, HE’S PERFECT, I BOTH HATE THE WORLD AND LOVE IT SIMUTANIOUSLY,” which would get him a puzzled look and he really can’t be bothered explaining.

“I’m through being worried about getting impaled and also I just really wanted to kiss you,” Billy tells him when he pulls back, and Teddy blinks.

“Uh,” Teddy says. “Okay. Sure. I definitely wasn’t complaining. What was that part about getting impaled?”

“Minor side issue,” Billy says, waving one hand, and then his breath hitches because Teddy’s smiling again, all of 100 watts and blinding and so freaking sun-like that Billy wants to take his dad’s advice on the expensive sunglasses. That, or cry over how stupidly great his boyfriend is.

Billy blurts, “You’re stupidly great,” before he can stop himself and doesn’t even have time to grimace at how bad that sounded because Teddy is kissing him, his thumb stroking the underside of his chin.

Teddy says, “Back at you,” into his mouth, and then he’s stiffening; pulling back and looking sheepishly over Billy’s shoulder.

Billy opens his mouth to say _what_ but Teddy says, “Hello, Miss Kaplan,” in that polite, I’m-not-laughing-I-swear-to-god voice that they keep especially for parents. Usually when they find them in more compromising positions than this, though.

From behind him, Billy hears his mom say, “Boys,” as a greeting; knowing she’s smiling without needing to turn around.

“We were just leaving.”

“Absolutely. Have a nice day at school, Theodore.”

“You too, Mrs. Kaplan. I mean. Uh. Not at school, obviously. Because you’re- out of school.”

“I have been for some time,” Rebecca says, nodding, fighting laughter, and Billy thinks Teddy would rather be getting shot at by miscellaneous villains right now, judging from his blush.

Teddy clears his throat. “Well, we’ll just be. Going, then.”

Halfway down the driveway, Billy breaks the silence. “Smooth.”

“Shuddup,” Teddy mutters. He nudges Billy lightly in the ribs, who pushes back, and they both grin.

“Excited for training tonight?”

 “ _Duh_.”

 

 

 

The thing about stopping off at the comic store on their way to training is that it’s kind of weird- okay, bordering on fucking creepy- buying comics books based off of people that both Billy and Teddy see for ten hours a week.

Like, this one time when Skrulls had invaded (this one time, because it has happened multiple times, because Billy is a _superhero_ with _powers_ and it’s been more than a year and he’s still not over it), Captain America (!!!!!!!) had come into his room to help Billy up, and had stopped talking momentarily when he caught sight of Billy’s stacks of comics.

He hadn’t said anything, not even a flicker of raised eyebrows, it was barley even a pause and then he had gone on being all Captain-y, but Billy thinks that he notices when Cap pats him on the shoulder or something and Billy’s eye twitches from his inner girlish shrieks.

So yes, it’s creepy as fuck and Billy should probably stop buying them, but he’s nearly finished his collection of the full third arc and he’ll be damned if he’s going to stop just because he watched Iron Man brush his teeth last week.

Watched Iron Man brush his teeth because he had spent a night over at the Avengers Tower, because it was late and no-one could be bothered going home, because they had just spent the last three hours sparring, because _they are getting trained by the motherfucking Avengers._

Like, actually trained. To be a _superhero_. A proper one that doesn’t trip over his own cape (Captain Marvel- Carol, always Carol, call her Carol- tells him it’s happened to everyone).

Hawkeye teaches Kate how to hit a target on a tangent and Captain America teaches everyone how to fall properly and punch properly, and Iron Man fixes everyone up with some new gadgets, including Tommy, giving him a superhero suit that won’t chafe.

Tommy actually looks like he’s going to hug him for a second before his smirk solidifies again.

And then suddenly Billy’s seeing some of his favourite superheroes’ not-superhero side, and it takes about a week for Billy to start calling it their human side.

It’s not instantaneous, like they all whip off their masks and then share their sob stories. It happens slowly, over the course of a few months, when it stops becoming all about business and keeping the Young Avengers from shooting themselves in the foot, and starts becoming something with added shoulder-slaps and jokes tosses back and forth as they spar and one time they actually have a movie night which both Billy and Teddy spend looking at each other with concealed excitement every time any of the Avengers so much as breathe.

And even though Billy is one of the biggest Cap fanboys in the city, he can’t help but find it kind of weird to see him being all…

Steve-y.

There’s no other word for it. There’s a line between all of the Avengers and their superhero alter-egos, mostly because they’re in soldier-mode at the time, and it’s freaky but also really awesome to see Captain America, patriot saviour of the 21st century, turn into Steve Rogers, who has a dry wit and can still kick your ass without his shield, who grumbles when he wakes up in the morning and sometimes his laugh gets out of control. Also, he’s a bit of a dork, which makes both Billy and Teddy fanboy over maniacally in one of the empty rooms when they figure it out.

Like, 99% of the time you can still see the man who lead armies and punched Hitler in the face even when he’s lounging on the couch watching reruns, but then there’s that one percent when he’s snoring and his head is drooping onto Carol’s shoulder and he has nacho sauce on his face that he hasn’t rubbed off.

And Hawkeye’s being all Clint-y, which is less of a surprise, because he still makes dumb jokes and is sarcastic enough for an entire fleet. But then he’s ruffling Kate’s hair and teasing Teddy about his shirt and Billy can’t stop thinking that he’s watched an entire TV series about a spinoff where Hawkeye went rogue.

Captain Marvel being Carol-y is sort of a given, because she’s kind of like that from the start except she gets a bit looser. Same with Jessica Jones, who bitches over TV shows and can kill you in your sleep and tells Billy she’s crazy jealous that he has such a great family to go back to, which Billy doesn’t know how to respond to, because, uh, thanks?

Iron Man being Tony-y is even more of a shock, because Billy had always assumed that, you know, Iron Man was just Iron Man and that’s kind of it because there’s not much underneath the surface except for unresolved daddy issues. Which, as it ends up, there are, and lots of them, but it also turns out that Tony adds up to more than being an asshole and a hero all in one. Which he still manages, but he also puts a lot of thought into what to build for everyone and works harder than he has to and sometimes he gets this heavy look on his face and sometimes it’s directed at Cap, and Billy can’t decipher them and never tries to ask about it.

So, it’s weird. It’s weird and it’s great and it’s dangerous and Billy’s happier than he’s ever been, even if he has more bruises than when he used to get beat up at school, and he has this small, dysfunctional little family carved outside his relatives when he needs to go to it and the Avengers are starting to become members of it.

Which would just about make Billy’s entire life.

 

 

 

 

‘Absurd,’ Billy has found, is a word that he’s been using way too often in his head lately. In his head because even he can’t pull it off out loud, and because his life is fucking _absurd_.

Like right now, when his lips are thinned from the effort of not coming right out and saying _how is this my life_ and giggling insanely and he has a dish-towel in one hand and Cap- Steve- is handing him a dripping plate.

Billy Kaplan, the Jewish, gay, nerdy, unemployed superhero, is doing the dishes with Captain America.

Take _that_ , everyone who’s ever kicked his ass.

Billy talks occasionally, usually to ask where something goes, and then finds himself repeating over and over in his head _, I’m putting a plate away at the Avengers Tower with Captain America. I’m putting a coffee mug away at the Avengers Tower with Captain America. I almost broke a glass while doing the dishes with Captain America in the freaking Avengers Tower_ , and shouldn’t Billy be used to this kind of thing by now?

They all have labelled mugs, Billy realizes about halfway through, when he’s swiping the dish-towel over the flat of a coffee mug with the words ‘CLINT BARTON’ in sparkly pink lettering.

Billy smiles to himself as he puts it away, and when he turns back around to get the next one, it reads ‘STEVE ROGERS’ in big, black block letters.

“I told Tony to lay off the pink on that one,” Steve says, and Billy lets out an undignified snort that has no place in the Avengers Tower and he should be ashamed for letting it pass his lips. Or his nostrils. Whatever.

“Too bad Clint didn’t get there in time.”

Steve is wrist deep in suds when he says, “Actually, Clint requested it,” and passes Billy another plate.

“Sounds like Clint.” Billy keeps his eyes on the plate in case he gets a sudden attack of the klutz and does something stupid like spaz the fuck out and drop the plate on the floor. Also because his voice is really level right now and he doesn’t think he’ll be able to keep that up if he looks up at Steve and realizes for the millionth time that he’s actually talking to him. “I’m surprised he didn’t ask for more rhinestones.”

“He tried,” Carol says as she walks in, sweat ringing her forehead in a shiny halo from training Eli. That’s another unfair thing that superheroes just seem to have: the unnatural ability to look like raw sex when they work out, as opposed to Billy, who looks like he’s been murdered in a cow stampede and sweated a lot during it.

Carol’s easier to talk to- less intimidating, even if the others don’t mean to be- so Billy smiles and nods at her as she passes. “Hey, Carol.”

“Hey, Wic.” She’s called him that ever since they met, even after Billy had introduced himself properly, and it warms his stomach every time he hears her say it in that easy tone, like they’ve been friends for years and he’s not a gazillion years younger than her along a class-A geek.

She squeezes Billy’s shoulder before leaning over to chin herself on Steve’s, moving with it as he scrubs. “And why the heck are you making our guest do the dishes? I mean, I know he thinks scraping dog crap out of a garbage bin with you is the panicle of the human experience, but give the kid a break.”

“Ignoring that,” Steve says, handing one last mug- Jessica’s, ironically, since she’s walking in as he talks- before pulling the plug out. “And he offered, thank you very much.”

Jessica’s doing the same thing as Carol- sweating and looking like an underwear model while doing it. She wiggles her fingers at Cap, her eyebrows coming up. “Oooh, ‘thank you very much.’ Pay attention, little one, this is the Cap version of bitching.”

Tony comes in- it’s weird; Billy thinks they all have, like, a tracking device or something to let each other know where they are at all times, because there’s no other way they can accidentally walk in on each other this much- and makes an interested noise. “Steve’s bitching at someone? Oh, this I’ve got to see.”

“I’m not bitching at anyone,” Steve says, exasperated.

Billy makes a mental note to tell Teddy later that he heard Captain America say ‘bitching.’

 

 

 

Three days later, when Kate walks back into training, she completely ignores Clint and comes straight over to Billy, Teddy, Tommy and Eli, who are taking a rest on one of the beanbags that was dragged down especially for them.

“I have something to tell you but it has to wait until later,” she says, and her face is doing a weird twichy-sort-of-smile-sort-of-cringe-basically-weirded-out thing. Then she turns around and goes back to Clint, who is yelling at her from across the room.

They don’t get anything else out of her until they’re all at the pizza place an hour later, after nagging her for almost the entire time. It’s getting dark- Carol had offered to fly them home, but instead they had walked two blocks over to lean across the bench towards Kate, who still has that same sort-of-smile.

Mouth full, Tommy groans loudly. “Can you just _tell_ us so we can all go to _sleep_ , I woke up at _six fucking thirty_ this morning-”

“I just walked in on Cap and Tony having sex.”

The shocked pause doesn’t last long.

Billy and Teddy both say, “ _What_ ,” Tommy starts to laugh, not bothering to cover his mouth to protect from pizza pieces flying out.

Eli scrunches his nose. “Wait, you mean, like, _sex_ , sex?”

“No, I mean they were flying a hot air balloon.” Kate pops a fry into her mouth. “No, Eli, you moron, I mean _they were having sex_. As in, gay sex. Sweaty, hot, thrusting gay sex. I mean, obviously any sex they have would be gay sex-”

“You mean back when we were training a few hours ago,” Billy blurts. “And those times where they were both suspiciously absent, they were-?”

Kate shrugs. She still has that pursed smile, like she doesn’t know what to do with it, but it’s quickly turning smug. “Probably. Hey, if I had a chance to bang Captain America, I’d jump on it with both hands, so I don’t blame Tony. Everyone wants to hop on that.”

Tommy’s still laughing, both his hands are now over his face. “Fuck, this explains a lot.”

“It does?” Teddy looks over at him.

Kate tilts her head at him pityingly. “Do you not have _eyes_?”

Billy, sitting there with his worldview shattered and slightly turned on with a pizza slice in his hand, starts to think that it kind of really does make sense. The ‘jokes’ from Jessica about it, how Carol would always nudge one when the other one came into the room, and the looks that Billy always thought were accidental, or that he was reading too much into them-

“Huh,” he says, almost thoughtfully, and there’s another pause.

Kate sips her drink through her straw.

Teddy and Billy trade glances, communicating with their eyebrows.

Eli looks at his plastic fork like it’s going to reveal his epic destiny if he stares hard enough.

Finally, Tommy says, “So who was on top,” and Eli slams down his fork and nearly yells, “Tommy, fuck, we don’t need to _know_ that!”

“Hey, I’m just that comfortable with _my_ heterosexuality, I don’t know about _you_ , Eli.” Tommy flashes him a shit-eating grin. “So, Kate?”

Kate’s face has gone funny again. “Uh, Steve was.”

“Yeah?”

“Dude,” Eli says. “You’re getting way too into this, it’s kind of creeping me out.”

“You would be, if you saw them,” Kate says, and then clears her throat. “Uh, together. It was… it looked very… uh, good. For them, I mean.”

Eli drops his head down onto the table, lifting it and then letting it drop. “I hear nothing, I hear nothing-”

“Oh, come on.” Tommy flicks him on the back of his head. “Don’t be such a homophobe.”

“Oh, ha, ha, ha fucking _ha_ ,” Eli says loudly, lifting his head. “Go fuck yourself, Tommy, you all know I’m not. I just don’t want to know what Captain American and Iron Man do in bed, if you don’t mind.”

Kate’s shifting in her seat now, something like a blush creeping up her cheeks, and Billy catches Teddy’s eye for a second before looking away.

A few seconds pass, and then:

“ _I_ want to know what they do in bed,” Teddy admits under his breath, and Billy chokes on his own spit even though one of them were going to have to say it and he’s infinitely glad it didn’t have to be him.

Eli makes a pained sound and drops his head again, and it lands with a _thunk_.

“I’ll give you the details later,” Kate says, and her voice is more pitched than it was a moment ago.

 

 

 

 

Billy doesn’t look at Steve and Tony differently in a _bad_ way, of course. So what if they’re gay, or bi, or they’re just the exception, or it’s just for getting off and they’re technically straight, or whatever.

He can’t deny that he does look at them differently, though. Like, he sees them talking quietly in the corner of the lounge, both with soft smiles, and wonders how the hell he didn’t notice it before. He passes newsstands and sees pictures of Steve and Tony on the front page in a blurry picture after saving the day yet again and can’t stop thinking if they had celebratory, thank-god-we’re-alive sex afterwards.

“I just want to throw back his head and scream, _Iron Man and Captain America have hot, sweaty, thrusting gay sex,”_ Billy yell-whispers to Teddy on the train, leaning over far enough that only Teddy’s in earshot.

“Which would go over _so_ well in the middle of rush hour in New York,” Teddy whispers back, and his breath is a warm huff against Billy’s neck. After another few seconds, Teddy snorts quietly. “They didn’t mention _that_ in the comics.”

“I don’t think they’re even allowed,” Billy says, and he can hear someone snickering down the left of them. Someone’s pointing at how close he and Teddy are together; at how their hands are linked.

Teddy notices Billy notice, and holds his hand even tighter.

After training that day, Billy manages to catch Kate alone as she waits for the bus.

It takes him five minutes of pointless small talk until he finally gets up the courage, and blurts, “Hey, so what did you tell Teddy about the, uh.”

Luckily, she finishes it for him, albeit slightly nervously. “Hot, sweaty, thrusting gay sex?”

“Yeah, that.”

Kate’s quiet for a few seconds, looking out at the road like she’s watching for the bus. “It was, uh.”

She looks down, then back up at the road, but Billy can tell she’s just searching for an excuse not to meet his eyes, and freaking fair enough. “They weren’t just, y’know. Fucking,” she says, and shrugs, almost to herself. “It looked like they were making love. Or whatever. Like, they looked like they were in love.”

Billy nods, not looking at her, either, trying to get himself to focus on whether or not that shape in the horizon is a bus or just a large truck.

Kate says, “It was _really_ hot,” in a rush, and Billy chokes on a laugh.

Kate continues, her hands moving like she doesn’t know what to do with them. “Like, _insanely_ hot, I understand why people do fetish porn with them, I stood there for like thirty seconds and only half of it was out of shock, it made me jealous I didn’t have a prostate, and fuck you for that, by the way-”

Billy’s laughter is half embarrassed and half spluttering, and Kate keeps cursing him and the heavens and life itself that she doesn’t have a prostate, and when the bus finally comes, Billy’s ribs hurt from laughing so hard.

 

 

 

 

Billy tries to come up with a clean, polite way to ask him, wrestles with it for three days and finally just comes out and asks.

“-meant to thank you for making that new outfit for Teddy so he doesn’t need to buy new shirts all the time and by the way are youinlovewithSteve?”

_Nailed it._

He says the last part in a low mumble that he’s not entirely sure made it out, but judging by Tony’s expression he heard it just fine.

Tony struggles with his own face for a few seconds, his mouth opening and closing, and finally says, “Why,” like it pains him.

“…because Kate walked in on the two of you, uh, together, and I just wanted to know?”

In his mind, he can hear his inner Rebecca Kaplan berating him for asking such a rude and personal question and oh my _god_ he’s asking Iron Man about his sex life with Captain America, JesusfuckingshitChrist.

Tony’s expression keeps twisting in on itself. “It’s complicated.”

Tony never calls him ‘kid.’ Or ‘kiddo,’ or ‘little one,’ or any of the other things that the Avengers call all of his team- Tony, as far as Billy knows, hasn’t called any of them anything other than their names, their superhero names or nicknames he’s made up for them, but never anything about how young they are, ever.

He thinks he might have heard him once, though, to Cassie, just before she died. He thinks that maybe that’s why he stopped- he can’t let himself think about just how young they really are after he’s watched another one of them die like Cassie did.

Billy is tempted to say, _okay, sure, I can buy that, thanks for talking to me, please don’t repulsor me in the face_ , and then walk off and never show his face to anyone ever. But, because he’s Billy and he’s gotten himself into too many life or death situations like this, he keeps talking.

“I can handle it,” he says, and nearly flinches from how _young_ he sounds right now, like all of his just-barely-seventeen years are heaping up on those words, like he’s a six year old trying to fit into his dad’s suit.

“I, uh.” Tony’s hand moves like he’s going to scratch the back of his head before he drops it. “We’re not, uh.”

“He loves you,” Billy says, and goddamnit, this is worse than last month when he had mouthed off to Doctor Doom and nearly got the lower part of Manhattan blown up.

Tony’s face does the twisting thing again. “I don’t know,” he says after a while, looking elsewhere. He swallows. “Even if he did, we have- baggage.”

He rubs a hand down his face. “Like I said, it’s complicated, Billy.”

Billy nods, automatic. “Yeah, I bet it is. He loves you, you love him, and you’re like eight times smarter than me so I think you can figure something out.”

“It’s not that-”

“Easy,” Billy finishes for him, stupidly calm except not at all. His hands are shaking. “I know. I know it’s screwed up and you’re superheroes and whatever, but to be honest I think you two are being really fucking stupid about this.”

He just swore in front of Iron Man. He just swore _at_ Iron Man. Oh, god, he’s never going to be able to remove the repulsor burns from his face.

When he looks up from the floor where he’s been staring, Tony isn’t looking at him. Instead he’s looking down and away, out into the kitchen, where there are voices floating in, and he has that heavy look in his eyes again.

“You and Hulkling,” Tony says finally, still not looking at him. “It’s not easy, either, is it?”

Billy says, “It depends on what day of the week it is,” and doesn’t know exactly how to articulate how stupidly, brilliantly _easy_ it actually is with Teddy most of the time, even when they’re knee-deep in sewage, when they’re playing with each other’s hair, when they’re yelling at each other until they’re both hoarse, when they’re laughing against each other when Billy gets his shirt stuck as he tries to get it over his head.

“And even if it wasn’t,” Billy says, “I’d still try.”

Tony falls silent at that, and doesn’t speak for a long time. Then he breathes in, long and noisy. “Do us all a favour and don’t let that go, okay?”

“I’m not planning to.”

“Good,” Tony says, and that’s that.

 

 

 

 

Billy finds Teddy leaning against the wall waiting for him after training, and Teddy’s in the middle of saying, “What’s wrong,” when Billy kisses him.

Teddy kisses back on instinct, one hand through his hair and coming to rest at the back of his neck, squeezing lightly.

Billy lets the kiss go on until they’re both breathless, arms around each other, and Teddy’s looking at him in a way that makes Billy fall a bit more in love with him every time he sees it.

Teddy has to suck in a breath before he says, “What is with you and the random kisses lately.”

Billy noses at the edge of his chin. “I can stop if you want.”

“Don’t even,” Teddy says, and Billy’s laugh gets caught in his mouth.

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to my friend Kate, who tempted me into the glorious ways of billyteddy.
> 
> Blame her.


End file.
